Taiwanese carriers and transit card provider to launch NFC TSM this year

The TSM service for NFC payments being built by a joint venture between five Taiwanese carriers and prepaid card provider Easycard is to go live by the end of 2014, the partners have announced. A rival TSM backed by Taiwan’s financial institutions is also due to begin operations in December 2014.

“This platform allows smartphone users to integrate payment methods, including credit cards, smartcards and vouchers, on their NFC-enabled devices,” said a spokesperson for the joint venture.

“Using open architecture, our platform employs the same subscriber identity module card on the user’s smartphone for verification. We believe it will become the mainstream standard in providing convenient, efficient and secure payment services.”

There are currently 4.2 million people in Taiwan equipped with an NFC phone, a survey conducted for the partners has found, and 15% of those consumers are expected to be able to use the platform to make NFC payments by the end of 2015. Those figures are expected to rise to 9.5 million NFC phone owners and 5.7 million mobile payment service users by 2019.